Sunday Meals: Chicken Curry FAILURE

Martha Stewart recently said:

“Oh – oh I DO have a minor gripe about that too. Because WHO are these bloggers? They’re not trained editors at Vogue magazine! I mean there are bloggers writing recipes that aren’t tested that aren’t necessarily very good, or are copies of everything that really good editors have created and done. So, bloggers create a kind of um, a, um, popularity but, they are NOT the experts! And we have to understand that.”

And my favorite blogger from Grasping for Objectivity said that she was right. We bloggers are not experts, we make mistakes, we aren't perfect, but in a way, that makes us a more reliable source. The recipes seen in magazines have been tried and practiced again and again to perfection until decidedly perfect. You never see the mistakes that they make, everything is edited to look perfectly.

Because I'm just a blogger, I make mistakes. And I'm happy to share my mistakes and failures with my readers, because you deserve to see that I'm not perfect and that I make mistakes too.

So I occasionally, but rarely, write these posts about my Sunday meals. Sunday is typically the only day of the week that I can really try to cook something. I work 5-9 every night and am a full-time college student, so Sunday is the day I attempt to cook... attempt being the key word.

I've never loved cooking. I like making cookies sometimes but I'm more motivated to make cookies because I love to eat them. I am never motivated to cook a meal. My husband, quite honestly, is a better cook than I am and is more willing to cook as well. So I only attempt to cook. But I am very skilled in following recipes.

My husband and I are very poor and don't have very much food lying around the house, especially since we're moving this week. So this past Sunday I tried to create a meal from what we do have. I had a can of chicken, rice, and curry powder. We have made curry before with basically the same ingredients so I was pretty sure it would work.

I started out by cooking our minute rice (which I am an expert and making and often just have a bowl of rice for a meal) and by putting the can of chicken in a frying pan and heating it up. Yes I know I could just eat the chicken out of the can, but I wanted it warm. Everything was going good and was looking really well.

The rice was almost done so I started adding the curry powder to the chicken. I added some extra water to make it blend together better. I knew milk would work better, but we didn't have milk, just water. My husband came over to see what smelled so good (because he loves curry). I gave him free reign to add more curry powder, which he happily did.

Everything was looking good and we started putting everything into our bowls. It smelled delicious and I was feeling proud of myself. We prayed and blessed the food then sat down to eat. I took my first bite...

Too. Much. Curry! And the chicken wasn't that great either! The rice was good, because I'm an expert at that. I took a few more bites and decided I couldn't eat anymore. So I took out all the chicken and just ate the rice with some of the curry powder still there, that was super delicious.

My husband ate his whole bowl and told me he really liked it, but I hated it! So I suppose it's not exactly a failure. If I had used a real chicken breast instead of canned chicken that would have helped it. For me personally, there was too much curry powder and it was just powder, I like more of a curry paste, so that would need to be changed. Vegetables would have been a good addition as well.

Over all I do think that I could fix up this recipe to make it work, and that alone is hope for me. I know I'm not the best cook, but I'm trying to improve that and consider this a lesson learned. I always believe that we learn from our mistakes, and I'm happy knowing that I can improve this recipe.

Do you have a recipe failure? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Thanks for reading!!